Retail shopping web sites are popular with consumers because they can shop at home from the convenience of their home computer. Retail web sites give the consumer a lot of power because the consumer can search vast databases of offered goods and services, comparing prices, features and customer reviews, and then purchase selected products in a simple on-line check-out transaction. Manufacturers recognize that web sites featuring their products can be a valuable marketing tool. Consumers interested in a manufacturer's products will often visit the manufacturer's web site to obtain information about products of interest. Thus, manufacturer web sites represent a valuable opportunity to sell products.
Unfortunately, many manufacturers have existing business relationships that make this infeasible. For example, a manufacturer may have a longstanding business relationship a large retail distributor, against whom this direct-sale merchandising would compete. Thus such manufacturers have business reasons to refrain from using their web sites for direct sales to consumers.
Some manufacturers have addressed this problem by placing hyperlinks within their web sites to the web site of a retail merchandiser who can sell the product directly to the consumer. When the consumer identifies a product of interest on the manufacturer's site, he or she can click on a hyperlink and be taken to a retailer's site. In this regard, a user selected shopping cart may be delivered from the manufacturer's site to the retailer's site. However, such a hyperlink typically places the consumer into the shopping area of the retail web site, where the consumer may (a) become distracted and thus fail to purchase the product or (b) engage in comparative shopping and possibly purchase a competing product. Clearly, both of these alternatives can result in lost sales for the manufacturer.
The present invention addresses the foregoing through a business method employing computer network technology that allows the customer to “shop” for products at the manufacturer's web site by selecting products of interest and placing them into an electronic shopping cart. Then, instead of proceeding to a checkout line at the manufacturer's site, the system software transfers the customer directly to the checkout line of a retail site of the customer's choosing. (The checkout line of a retail site is that part of the retail site that is brought up when the customer presses a BUY, PURCHASE, or similar button when navigating the retail site.) The entire context of the transaction is also transferred to the retail site. Thus the contents of the shopping cart that was filled at the manufacturer's site are automatically transferred to a shopping cart at the retailer's checkout line. Because the consumer is transferred directly to the checkout line of the retail site, there is less likelihood the customer will be distracted or presented with other shopping alternatives. Since the system saves the state of the shopping cart as the customer jumps from manufacturer's site to retailer's site, the consumer does not need to repeat the shopping selection process at the retailer's site and the manufacturer is relieved from handling the payment and shipping transaction directly with the consumer.
The invention encompasses a new method for conducting electronic commerce in which manufacturing and retailing entities cooperate to give the consumer a seamless web-shopping experience, without the clutter and distraction of having to navigate through multiple web sites on the manufacturer and retailer's respective sites. This business method can be implemented using a variety of different interactive web-based technologies. For a more complete understanding of the invention, its objects and advantages, refer to the following specification and to the accompanying drawings.